Police, Comic-Con Speak About Hall H Attack

Details have been released about the stabbing in Comic-Con International’s Hall H on Saturday afternoon, with both the San Diego Police Department and Comic-Con International’s David Glanzer issuing statements about the incident. Comic Book Resources quotes SDPD Sergeant Gary Mondesir:

Basically, inside of Hall H during Comic-Con, prior to one of the showings, two males got into a dispute. One male attacked the other male, stabbing him on the side of his eye with a pen. Officers were relatively close by. Citizens within the hall detained the person. Officers came and arrested him, and right now we’re processing the scene inside… We have a field evidence technician who’s taking measurements and collecting evidence…The show is still going on. It happened in an area where we didn’t have to stop the show. We can actually work around it and process the scene. It happened inside the hall but off to the side. We have numerous witnesses – I’m not at liberty to tell you how many – but we’ve taken their statements.

This is extremely rare. The folks that attend here are extremely well behaved. The police asked them to do things like cross the street and it’s a mass full of people, yet they orderly all cross the street. We have no problem with the attendees of Comic-Con.

The idea that this horrific attack – seemingly over someone arriving early for the Marvel Studios panel, much to the displeasure of the suspect – is an unusual, one-time-only thing, is strengthened with the statement released by Comic-Con Director of Marketing and Public Relations David Glanzer, who told CBR, “I’ve been with the show since 1984, and I don’t remember an incident anything near to this in all the years that I’ve been here, and anything I’ve heard about prior… I don’t know that it was anything like this. This is a first time.”